The Fallen
by Dejah
Summary: Riddick becomes one with the beast inside as he seeks revenge on the merc that has ruined his life. Character death. Rated for graphic violence and language. AU to TCoR. Chapters 5/5.
1. Rage

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The Fallen

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Chapter One: Rage

It was the beast, calling for revenge, craving blood. Riddick felt the heat flood through his veins, set his muscles on fire, clear his mind. Clarity that came with the beast's total awakening brightened his vision, sharpened his focus. It roared in his ears.

Suddenly, everything was bright. The lights were on low, but color came through the shine, and he could see the blood on Imam's robes and trickling down his face, into his eyes, and from the split in his lip. The beast thundered and raged.

Pent up for the four month trip across galaxies to be at this point, at this moment, to find this man that had torn everything apart.

It wouldn't be enough just to kill him, Riddick knew this, even as he held his blade to the other man's throat. It wouldn't be enough for the man to see death and know it held him in the moment before he would be drawn in, pulled to the depths, left with the eternity of a room that could never be escaped. An eternity that couldn't be counted in hours, or days, or years, but in millenniums. 

"No escape," Riddick growled, feeling the beast take control of his mind and his body. For the first time in many years, Riddick didn't fight the animal for control. He didn't block it from the one place in his mind that he kept for himself. He didn't keep it from the halls of his mind that were full of painful memories and violent triggers long pulled.

He'd kept it away from those places in his head for so long, keeping it quiet so it wouldn't wake and take out its hate on those around him. He needed to be able to come back from the violence and the heat that burned his blood, causing it to boil and scorch the inside of his veins.

The beast growled sometimes, allowed to roam on a leash when Riddick did his "business" of killer for hire. When assigned some scum-of-the-universe dirt bag that didn't just need killing, but _begged_ for it with their actions. Some of them had been so inhuman in their deeds that it had often made Riddick feel he could become physically sick just thinking about it.

Now this. Torment raged, and the beast was beyond containment. There had only been one person in the universe that could calm it and make it purr. Riddick hadn't had the strength to bar it himself, but _she_ could. Their years together had proven to him again and again that there was hope for a future.

Ten years of joy and sorrow, love and grief, all thrown away like so much trash because of this man that Riddick held by the throat.

"I am going to thoroughly enjoy this," Riddick growled between clenched teeth. The beast was in control, but for the first time, it was giving him permission to be an observer. He didn't feel the blankness that usually accompanied a loss of his control. The clarity that came with his necessity to kill didn't fade as the beast strained forward. Instead, Riddick felt it intensify to a point where he felt almost _too_ real.

In a move too fast for any human eye to see, Riddick hit a nerve at the base of the man's neck with a quick knuckle strike and the man went limp against the wall. Riddick stepped back from him and let him fall to the hard floor with a thud.

"Imam," Riddick whispered, taking control of his voice back from the beast. "Imam, please, look at me, Holy Man."

Imam raised his eyes to Riddick's. The whites were red with hemorrhaged veins, a stark contrast to the black-brown of his pupils. His face was streaked with blood and his nose was severely broken. Blood soaked through his brown and cream robes, mostly around the tears caused by the merc's blade.

"Riddick," Imam whispered. "I do not understand. What is going on?"

Riddick moved swiftly to the holy man's side and cut his bindings. Imam immediately fell forward and Riddick caught him gently, the beast stepping back to allow Riddick to care for the man that even the beast respected.

"I'll tell you later, but right now you've got to get to a hospital. Do you understand me?"

Imam nodded and Riddick helped him to his feet carefully, leading him to the door. Riddick took Imam to the apartment next door and pounded on the door. It opened, revealing an older woman. Her face was questioning but turned to fright as she saw Imam's bloodied and battered appearance.

"Call for help," Riddick said. "Please. He's badly hurt."

The woman stared for another long moment then rushed back into her apartment. Riddick pulled Imam inside after the woman and into the living room. He threw a folded up blanket on the couch to protect it from blood and then carefully laid Imam on it. "Help's comin', Holy Man," Riddick said quietly. He could hear the woman calling for help on the phone.

"The ambulance is on the way," the woman said as she came back into the room.

Riddick looked at her. "Thanks," he said then turned back to Imam. "I'll be back, Imam," he told his friend. "Then we'll talk."

"Wait! Where are you going?" the woman called as he headed for the door. 

"I have some things to take care of. I have to go." The beast was screaming for release again and Riddick knew he had to get away before it was too late.

He fled the tiny apartment and stepped back into Imam's. The merc was beginning to stir now and when he awoke Riddick was hunched over him, elbows rested on his knees, a long, curved blade in his right hand. His face was cold as ice and completely devoid of emotion. The silver sheen of his eyes glittered like diamonds.

"I'm going to start with your balls," Riddick stated calmly. Then he knocked the man out and pulled him out of the apartment. He _was_ going to start with the man's balls, but he wasn't going to do it there.


	2. Torture

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WARNING!

This chapter contains graphic violence that can only be considered torture. If you're squeamish, please take this warning seriously and do not read any further. My imagination is vivid, and the nature of this fan fiction is to show how I think Riddick would react in this situation. I won't ruin the plot, but please be warned that what happens in this chapter is not for children or people that can't handle extreme and vivid violence. You have been warned.

The Fallen

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Chapter Two: Torture

Riddick didn't lie. He often bent the truth, or walked around it, changing subjects, avoiding answers, living through vague answers and half-truths. But Riddick usually prided himself on telling the truth, on honesty, even if it was something no one would expect from an escaped convict.

So now, standing before the bound and gagged merc, Thomas Clark, who had stolen away the most important aspect of Riddick's life, Riddick knew where he was going to start, and he already had the other man's pants open and pulled down around his knees.

Riddick didn't take any sort of pleasure in seeing other men naked. It was something he'd avoided as much as possible in the slam and something he wasn't even remotely interested in. If he wanted to see a man naked, he'd strip down and look in a mirror. But right now, at this moment, the beast was reveling in the sight of Thomas Clark stripped down and tied to a chair.

"As I said before," Riddick began, pulling out his blade and twirling it deftly between his fingers, "I'm starting with your balls."

Clark twisted and squirmed and Riddick watched in sadistic amusement as the other man's balls contracted up into his body. "You're not going anywhere," Riddick growled and pulled a thick rubber band out of his pocket, stretching it out around his fingers then reaching down and wrapping it around Clark's scrotum, nice and tight.

"This hurts," Riddick said as he put the rubber band on carefully. "But it has to be done, because when I cut them off you're going to bleed a lot, and this will work as a tourniquet. I want to start with your balls, not _end_ with them," Riddick continued. Riddick didn't tell Clark that his plan was to cut into his balls just enough to give himself the start he needed to _rip_ them off by hand.

At this point, Clark was shuddering and rocking the chair back and forth, doing anything to get away from Riddick and the metal shiv that glittered wickedly in his hand. Riddick was spinning it between his fingers again and it danced and skipped along like an extension of his hand. It was short and curved, with a thin blade and grip that fit the exact size of Riddick's hand.

"Ready?" Riddick growled in a deadly whisper, leaning forward so fast Clark didn't even see the movement. 

Clark howled something around his gag that sounded like, "**_No!_**" but it was too late. Riddick flicked his wrist with the slightest of movements and the blade skipped across the left side of Clark's scrotum, deep, but not all the way across, halfway severing just one nut.

Riddick's prisoner shrieked around his gag, rocking the chair so furiously that he almost tipped over. Riddick roared and stomped down hard on the seat of the chair, between Clark's legs and almost on his injured balls. "Nothing to save you now," he hissed, leaning over his bent knee to place his nose just inches from Clark's.

With a grin full of hate and rage twisting his lips into a parody of humor, Riddick put his foot on the floor and reached down to grasp Clark's slightly bleeding balls in his hand. "Gross," he muttered, just before he squeezed Clark's balls tight and ripped them off.

The scream that issued from Clark around his gag was ear shattering. Riddick knew, somewhere deep inside where the beast didn't control him, that this was something that would make even _him_ sick normally. But not now, in this moment, where the man before him, writhing in pain, was the one that Riddick was torturing.

The beast that was Riddick dropped the severed scrotum into a plastic bag with a sneer of disgust on his face. He turned away from Clark, who was moaning and rocking the chair, desperately trying to clench his legs together against the bonds anchoring them apart. Riddick walked to the kitchen sink of his ship and washed his hands with soap and boiling hot water. It burned his skin but he didn't care.

"Just the beginning," Riddick continued, turning back to his captive. "See how well that rubber band works?" he commented absently, noting that the flow of blood was minimal, the wound pinched together by the tightly wrapped elastic.

Clark was still now, his eyes rolled back slightly in his head and his face deathly pale from shock and pain.

"Now, what should we try next?" Riddick questioned, drying his hands on his pant legs. "I've made dying slow for a lot of people, but the things I'm gonna do to you…" Riddick paused and grinned before letting out a low whistle of awe. "These things are gonna be special, make no mistake." The shiv twirled between his fingers as he moved to stand directly in front of Clark, a smirk on his lips. 

"How 'bout one tiny slice after another? I'm guessing, if I'm real careful, I can get all the way to a thousand without you dying. You'll start bleeding out slowly, but I'll keep the cuts away from any major arteries to it'll take hours… maybe even days." Riddick circled around behind Clark, trailing the very tip of his shiv around his captive's collarbone. "You're a man that can appreciate torture that lasts for days, aren't you, Clark?" Riddick asked. "I mean, that's what you did to her, isn't it? Three days before you left her for dead?"

Riddick shrugged. "Ah, well. Whether or not you appreciate it, you'll live through it until I decide to _let_ you die. My profession as of late has made it necessary for me to carry a number of medically advanced devices on board my ship. I can even produce blood if I have to. Give you a blood transfusion to keep you alive. You'll die when I _say_ you can die."

The sheet of plastic that Riddick had spread over the floor of his ship crackled beneath his boots as he continued to circle his prisoner.

"One cut at a time," Riddick continued. "Getting closer and closer to arteries, deeper and deeper until you can feel my blade hit bone, scrape your ribs." Riddick hunched low in front of Clark and smiled. "A thousand cuts," he whispered. 

Then with delicate precision, Riddick flicked the tip of his blade over Clark's right shoulder, cutting just deep enough to draw blood.

"One."

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Three days had passed and Riddick could feel that the beast was almost satisfied with the results of its labor on Thomas Clark. The roar in his ears had subsided to a growl, but the fires of hate and pain still burned in his heart. The hate kept the pain at bay, fighting at the deep, dark depression Riddick knew would set in when he was finished with Clark.

"You don't look so good," Riddick stated, leaning against the counter behind him as he stared at Clark indifferently, his arms folded across his chest, legs crossed at the ankles. "In fact, you look like death warmed over." Riddick paused and then laughed humorously at his own twisted joke.

"Like death warmed over" was an understatement if there had ever been one. Clark was chalk white with blood loss and shock. He was oozing blood from the promised thousand cuts that covered his body. Infection was setting into some of them, and the fever caused him to hallucinate. Riddick found himself speculating about what Clark saw him as now that his mind was going. The constant barrage of torture was quite obviously taking its toll. 

"Are you ready for this to end?" Riddick questioned, stepping toward Clark. "Are you ready for the last segment of our time together?"

Clark shuddered and managed a nod, blinking his eyes twice for "yes." Eyes that were red with hemorrhaged blood vessels, caused to rupture from all the stress he was under. From the pain coursing through his broken body.

"You want this to be the fast part?" Riddick continued. "I can just draw my blade across your throat and it'll be over so fast, you'll barely feel the end."

Two blinks.

Riddick pulled the scent of fear, horror, torture, blood, and hate into his nostrils, rolled it over his tongue, felt it slide down his throat. It tasted like burning. His muscles ached to be quick, the beast howled for that final rush of blood and pain, his mind screamed for the too-real clarity to finally break so that he could collapse into the pit that was his darkest nightmare. The nightmare he knew was waiting for him beyond this final act of revenge.

With the lightning speed that was his trademark, Riddick shot forward and leaned in close to Clark so the other man could feel his breath as he spoke. Riddick smirked. "Tough." Then he reached out, the blade once again in his hand, and ripped it deep across Clark's abdomen, cutting through flesh, muscle, and membrane to the intestines beneath the surface.

Clark howled and shook, but was too weak to rock his chair this time.

Riddick laughed and stuck his hand into the incision and grasped a handful of Clark's innards. Then he pulled.

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Clark's body was still. His intestines were spilled across his lap, dragging on the floor. Like a morbid, blood-slick rope, Riddick thought to himself as he felt the beast calm and slowly begin returning control back to him. 

It was truly over now.

Riddick stared out the port window at the stars for a moment, thinking of how she'd loved them. Then he quickly rolled the body and the chair up in the plastic sheeting he'd used to cover the floor and threw the whole mess into the incinerator, where it would burned to dust and then be jettisoned into space, not even a memory.

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Strange, he thought absently as he flicked the switch that would start up the incinerator, _thought I wouldn't feel so numb. Maybe there's something left to do._


	3. Falling

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The Fallen

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Chapter Three: Falling

Riddick sat in the waiting room, his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. Imam was in critical condition, his heart and breathing monitored by tubes and machines attached to every part of his body Riddick had been able to see. Medical treatment on New Mecca wasn't nearly as advanced as most places, the lack of violence among Muslims and pilgrims to the planet being a point of pride amongst its people.

Surgery, the doctor told Riddick, had lasted for thirteen hours as they fought to put back together what Clark had broken during his torture of Imam. Both lungs had been punctured by broken ribs, his stomach had been violently bruised, as well as his kidneys and liver. Too many broken bones for Riddick to count, including fingers, his right thigh, left arm, dislocated shoulder and most of his ribs. Mild skull fracture that had resulted in brain swelling. The doctors had been forced to drill into Imam's skull to relieve the pressure. Not to mention numerous knife wounds.

Imam would have died had Riddick been even two hours later. They told him Imam should make it. They'd patched hemorrhaged organs and checked all bruising; but the surgery had been major and would take a long time to heal from.

All Riddick could do now was wait. He didn't know how long he would have to wait before he could talk to Imam and tell him what this was all about. Before he could tell him who Clark was and why he'd come for Imam. Why Riddick had come for him.

Right now, Riddick was falling. He didn't know when he would hit the ground.

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**__**

Four Months Earlier:

Riddick was on his way back. Back to the tiny bit of peace he'd worked so hard to find. The bit of peace that had finally found him.

It had taken five years for Riddick to put his old identity to rest. Five years to pay for his new identity as Kyle Ryan. His new identity retained much the same appearance as the old one. Preferred hairstyle being shaved almost clean, clean shaven face, always in shape. But a lot of men were built strong, and hair and beards could be grown or manufactured. It was the shine that Riddick had had a hard time hiding. Shades and goggles couldn't be worn at all times, but contacts had been a must for the first few years he searched for a solution. 

The contacts had been originally designed for miners that couldn't pay for the more expensive shine jobs, the ones that allowed you to see during the day and the night. Riddick had worn those until he'd found a doctor that could upgrade his shine job, replace the slam manufactured lenses shot onto the back of his eyeballs with a specially made lens of pulsate-falade. Pulsate-falade didn't reflect light like slam made lenses did. It was its own light source, and was tinted dark and unreflective by a special process Riddick really knew nothing about. And because pulsate-falade was its own light source, it didn't cause light to burn your retinas the way reflecting lenses would. It also allowed Riddick to see in full color.

Riddick's eyes looked almost the way they had before his first shine. The brown was lighter, due to the glow of the pulsate-falade, but they were still brown instead of that eerie glowing silver he'd become so used to. In the dark they didn't glow at all, the tinting process doing its job. It didn't really matter if people noticed he was shined, though, as pulsate-falade was only commonly used among the more respectable citizens of the universe. This new, expensive shine job didn't mark him as a lowly miner, scamming merc, or convict. It was more likely to get him confused with a money-tossing yuppie that had seen the shine job as interesting cosmetic surgery.

Once he'd established his identity as Kyle Ryan and had put together plenty of additional aliases to fall back on while he performed his business, Riddick had gone back for her, just as he'd promised.

He'd gone to see her as often as possible. That had usually panned out to once a year. Sometimes less, sometimes more. He'd send messages when he could, but never used a vid or comm to get to her; those were too easy to trace.

When he'd shown up for her, a few months after her nineteenth birthday, she'd been the one to open the door. He'd been unable to believe how beautifully she'd grown up. It had been amazing, the transformation from girl to woman. He'd known from that moment that he could never be just her "big brother". He was in love with her in a completely different way.

And now, as he approached the suite they'd been staying in before he'd left, Riddick found himself whistling a tune beneath his breath. But just as he reached for the door handle, he knew something was wrong. 

His fingers froze, just touching the knob. His breath caught in his chest and he felt his heartbeat accelerate.

Adrenaline pumping through his veins, Riddick shoved the door open roughly and pulled the revolver from his waistband. He pressed his back against the wall and stared into the dark of the suite.

"Jack!" he called, his voice pitched to carry throughout the entire suite. "Jack! You in here, darlin'?"

Riddick waited in silence, fingers flexing on the grip of the revolver, finger gently touching the trigger. When there was no answer, Riddick stepped farther into the room, his booted feet eerily silent for a man so large. He crept quietly toward the hallway on his left, seeing the pale glow of light from his and Jack's bedroom door.

"Jack?"

Nothing. Riddick tried to avoid thinking of the phrase "deafening silence." So cliché. And it always meant something was wrong. Something bad had happened.

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Something horrible has happened. Something horrible has happened. He couldn't get it out of his head.

He finally got to their bedroom door. It was cracked open slightly and dim light filtered through to spill across the thick hallway carpeting. The lights were probably on medium-low setting. He tilted his head toward the small opening, ears straining for any noise coming from within.

That's when he heard it. The faint, rasping breath that indicated that his search was over and that his head had been right. Something horrible had happened.

Riddick kicked the door wide, stuffing the revolver into his waistband. He flew to the bedside and looked down at the woman laying strewn across the sheets. He dropped to his knees.

"Oh god. Jack. Baby, look at me, darlin'."

The sheets were covered in blood. Jack's clothes were ripped away, leaving only tattered remains in their place.

Jack's eyes fluttered slightly and her breathing caught in her throat. She seemed to be struggling with something internally, then she finally managed to turn her face toward his. "Ri-- Riddick," she whispered, her eyes cracking open just enough to see him. "Riddick." Her voice was thick, raspy. Pain contorted her face.

Riddick was a blur of motion as he leapt onto the bed and gathered Jack into his arms, disregarding blood that was still damp. "Baby, what happened?" Riddick questioned, desperately reining in the beast that was raging at this offence. 

Jack's eyes closed for a moment as she gathered enough strength to answer his question.

"Merc," she started, opening her eyes slightly. "Clark. Said his name was Thomas Clark. I wouldn't give you up, Riddick. Wouldn't do it." Her eyes closed again and she gasped for breath.

Riddick could see the damage done. She'd obviously been raped repeatedly. "How long ago did he leave?" Riddick gritted out between clenched teeth.

"Few hours, maybe. I don't know... He was here for three days. I wouldn't betray you. I swear. I'm sorry." She started to cry, her face twisting, fear that he would leave her and think she'd betrayed him evident in her eyes.

"Jack, you shoulda just told him what he wanted to know, baby. Don't be sorry. Please." Everything was starting to spin. Riddick could feel the beast taking control of everything, flushing out all his humanity until all that was left was the piece of him that Jack resided in. His balance.

"I'm dying," she whispered. "I don't want to leave. Not now."

"You're not dying. C'mon, darlin'. You're going to be fine. Don't talk like that." Growling, bristling. Riddick could feel it wound up in the dark corners of his mind, just waiting for the moment when it would be released. It knew he would release it this time.

She tried to smile, coughed up blood, shook her head. "No one would ever believe that Big Evil was an optimist."

"You're the only one who really knows me." Riddick felt his throat closing up, the tears welling up in his eyes. They spilled unchecked down his cheeks to land on her upturned face. One landed on the corner of her mouth and she licked it away with the tip of her tongue. 

"You could always cry in front of me," she whispered. Her hand lifted, as if she were drawing strength from his presence, and she pressed it against his cheek. He turned his face against it, placed a kiss in the center of her palm.

"You can't leave me, Jack," he said and leaned down to press his forehead against hers. "You can't. I'm lost without you."

"You need to know, love. I know that now you'll have to go after him. So you need to know. His name is Thomas Clark and he's going after Imam. I don't have much time left, so you have to go and save Imam before he gets him too, okay?"

"Stop! You're not gonna die."

"You have to get him," she continued, ignoring him. "Please, go."

Riddick shook his head and pulled her closer. "You know I won't. I can't."

She stopped asking, and he held her, while she held onto him best she could. It didn't take much longer. Memories of their life together played through his mind again and again. He knew those memories would be with him until the end of his days. Picture perfect.

He thought of how everyone important to him, everyone he'd cared about, had died much like this. Bleeding out in front of his eyes. Taken away into the dark. 

His best friend as a teen who'd been beaten to death by his father. That was the first man he'd ever killed, in revenge. The man in the slam who had taken a young Rick Riddick under his wing and protected him from men that would have used him and tossed him aside, or worse, kept him for a play thing. He'd protected Riddick, taught him to fight, given him a love of literature, art, martial arts, and his closest companions for years, blades. Allison Lambert, a little girl that had tried to pick his pocket and gotten caught, and he'd taken her in for over a year, killed by Johns to get to Riddick not long before the crash of the _Hunter-Gratzner_. Carolyn, saving his life.

And now his Jack. He knew she was dying. He was helpless to stop it, and he hated being helpless.

Riddick held Jack tightly, rocking gently back and forth, singing and whispering into her ear in a voice that was rough and raw with grief. It only took an hour.

It only took an hour for Riddick to start falling.


	4. Forgiveness

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The Fallen

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Chapter Four: Forgiveness

It had been two weeks since Riddick had killed Clark. Two weeks since he'd brought Imam to the hospital. A very long two weeks.

Riddick sat at Imam's side now, the beast contained for now, its hunger for blood satiated by Clark's violent death. Imam looked old; older than Riddick had ever really noticed before. Not that him and Jack had visited their friend often in the past five years. They were usually all over the universe, traveling from one interesting place or another, usually for Riddick's "work."

Riddick noticed now. He saw the deep lines bracketing Imam's mouth, the crows feet etched in the corners of his eyes, the white that streaked the once pitch black of his hair. Imam was old, tired, and now almost dead.

The doctors told Riddick he would be fine. Full recovery, surgery went well, his body is strong, et cetera, et cetera. It didn't really matter. Jack was gone and Riddick still had to tell Imam that his adopted daughter had been beyond rescue. That Riddick had rocked her and sang to her as best he could through his tears for one short hour, and then she'd died. That the only reason she'd made it an hour was because she'd held on for him.

He'd known that they wouldn't be able to save her at a hospital. Too much blood loss, too many broken bones. The wheezing in her breath had spoken of a collapsed lung. The blood she coughed up was proof of internal injuries, as was the bloated, purple mess that had been her stomach. Her right knee had been shattered into dust, probably by the sledge hammer Riddick had found stashed brown with dried blood beneath the bed. Skull fracture, broken arm, dislocated shoulder. The autopsy Riddick had had the coroners office perform on her body had shown him everything he needed to know. Given him the strength to fuel the flames of his hate and rage.

And raped. Her body had been used so horrible and savagely that everything had been torn, infected, and bleeding. Clark hadn't just raped her vaginally, though. He'd raped her anally as well. Abusing her body in so many ways that Riddick, after looking her body over himself, just after she'd died, had ran into the bathroom and retched again and again. He vomited and cried himself weak, shaking and heaving over the toilet until he couldn't move and laid in a heap on the bathroom floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

It was with hollow eyes that Riddick watched Imam wake from his drug induced sleep. As Imam's own dark eyes met Riddick's, the other man seemed to go from weary ache to wakeful horror.

"No," Imam said, shaking his head slowly, back and forth across his pillow. "No, Riddick. No. Tell me no. Tell me it is not true. Tell me."

Riddick could feel his carefully constructed facade cracking into pieces in the face of Imam's horror. He covered his face with his hands and dropped to his knees by Imam's bedside, silent sobs causing him to shudder. He pressed his forehead against the side of the bed and shook, begging for Imam's forgiveness. Begging Imam not to hate him for losing his daughter the way he despised and hated himself.

"He killed her," Riddick managed painfully. "Tortured her for three days and then left her for dead. It was horrible. And I couldn't save her. I couldn't help. I just sat there and held her and she died because of me."

The pain and terrible grief Riddick had felt from the start, and then had stashed away so he could function, hit him again. He felt sick and used up. He felt no shame at weeping before Imam, but a fearful ache was building in his chest as Imam continued to stay silent.

When one, callous roughened hand was gently placed on his head where he knelt, an acceptance of apology, Riddick felt the relief and grief inside of himself conflict with one another. Grief over Jack's torture and resulting death and relief that Imam wasn't cursing him and sending him away. The old holy man was now the only thing Riddick had left.

Riddick began to regain his composure but didn't move from where he was. He could hear Imam's own quiet sobs above him on the hospital bed, feel his grief deep inside. Riddick was thankful that Imam hadn't been subjected to the sight of Jack in her last hour. He was unsure if the holy man would have been able to handle it.

"Come here, Riddick," Imam said after long moments of silence, broken only by the quiet sobbing of the two men, who had both loved the same woman in their own, and very different, ways.

Riddick lifted his head and stared at Imam, knowing his face was a mask of pain, not caring that Imam could see it.

"I do not blame you," Imam said, holding Riddick's gaze with his own. "Jack chose her life with you because she loved you and she knew that you loved her. Sometimes terrible things happen without purpose and without reason. No logic can explain it."

"Where do I go now?" Riddick wanted to know. He'd been avoiding that question for weeks now. His mind turned off to fuel the beast that craved revenge and blood. But the blood was spilt and the vengeance exacted. Jack was still dead. His grip on the beast was tenuous.

"I wish I knew," Imam answered. "There are no simple answers."

"I'm ready to give up."


	5. Landing

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Warning: This chapter contains mildly vivid descriptions of torture and mention of rape.

The Fallen

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Chapter Five: Landing

**__**

One Year Later:

It was the story that he'd resisted being told. A part of his life wrapped up and hidden, bottled away, almost forgotten. Pretending to be forgotten. His own version of Jekyll and Hyde. His sanity and the insanity it hid battling for supremacy in a mind that held no hope. Man and beast. The internal and eternal war.

His shield that had contained and tamed everything he feared within himself was gone and buried, a white marble angel in a field of stones marking where she lay. No flowers grew in that place, just the remnant of the ones new, faded, dying. Stems cut, promising inevitable decay.

Morbidity was his constant companion, bringing a deeper darkness to his thoughts and daily imaginings as it never had before. The sun shown and yet it was night. His eyes burned as they had after surgery; as he hadn't felt them burn in years.

A year. An hour. A minute. To him, she had just died a moment before. He could see her blood on his hands. Every woman had her face, her scent, her laugh. His head jerked back and forth in crowds, searching for the elusive that his mind knew wasn't really there.

Tempered, barely contained. The insanity was winning. Hyde was almost out.

Riddick no longer felt like he was falling. Rock bottom was beneath his feet and he knew he'd landed. Dazed and desensitized to the world around him. Everything passed him by in a swirl of dim, tainted color and horrifying reality, blurred with exhaustion. Incapable of humanity.

"Riddick?"

Imam, sitting across from him at a tiny kitchen table. A mug of coffee sat before Imam, steaming gently. Riddick clasped his own between his hands, the burning hot porcelain scorching his palms, reminding him he was alive. It wasn't pleasant to remember. He prayed for death, but hadn't the courage to end his life himself.

"Hm?" he answered finally, forcing the stark, grotesque thoughts that pounded his mind aside. He fed them to the beast.

"You've been sitting there, without blinking, for five minutes," Imam answered.

Riddick looked down into his coffee, blinked as he realized his eyes were dry. Over the past year his grip on reality had become rather tenuous, threatening to become lost completely. He would have drifted over the edge by now if not for Imam's stable presence in his life and total acceptance. Despite his guilt and his inadequacies. Riddick didn't realize Imam didn't blame him. He didn't realize Imam didn't believe he should blame himself. Riddick believed Imam accepted him despite these things, not just despite Riddick's belief in them.

He stayed in an apartment not far from Imam's. His career as a widely sought killer-for-hire the ten years previous to Jack's murder had paid more than the bills. In the end he hadn't really needed to work anymore, it had just been a release of the tension that built up in his mind if he didn't free it on occasion. A necessary evil. 

Jack had never been disgusted, she had merely accepted that side of him as a part of the man she loved above all else. Now his funds were more than in order; Riddick was extremely wealthy. But his apartment was tiny, almost completely devoid of any furniture and felt empty and dead, even to himself. He would know. He'd been the bringer. The cause. Now he was dead. Death. Dead. One once, the other now. He hadn't killed since Clark. His blood boiled while his mind remained blank. 

Sometimes he felt stupid. As if his brain were starting to atrophy like the legs of a cripple unable to walk. Limp and lifeless, merely there for show, not for function. But while he felt blank most of the time, it wasn't the truth. His mind was rushing, wind swept and tortured, his chest in knots, his stomach a nauseas pit.

Riddick suddenly wanted to throw up. His eyes narrowed and he stood up without a word and stalked into the bathroom, flipped the cover on the toilet up, leaned over and vomited. A repeating pattern for most days, Riddick didn't even flinch as the small bit of food he'd forced down that day came up. He just opened his mouth, let it pour out. He tried not to think about the way his clothes were too big now. The muscles Jack had dragged her fingers over were much weaker, less defined. He was still bigger than most men and yet he was only a shadow of his former self. One small meal a day and constant nausea had his weight down eighteen kilos. He'd gone from a hulking ninety-eight kilos to a meager eighty.

Finished, Riddick stared at the contents of the toilet, saw the speckles of blood there, wondered how many times Jack threw up blood before he'd found her. He still remembered how many times she'd coughed it up while he held her; seven. Seven times he'd had to tip her to the side so she wouldn't drown in her own fluids. Seven times she hacked and vomited so hard she whimpered and cried with the torture of it all.

Riddick didn't whimper. He wished for oblivion, wanting to cough up his lungs, his stomach... his heart, which ached most. Most whenever he saw a woman about her height and coloring walk down a street, laughing and smiling. Alive.

Flushing and then turning away from the toilet, Riddick headed back into the kitchen, his mouth tasting bitter and hot like overheated metal. He sat at the table, across from Imam who hadn't moved from his seat. Imam knew where he'd gone. He knew exactly what had just happened in the bathroom.

Imam didn't bother to ask him if he was okay. Instead he tilted his head and opened his mouth, as if to say something. He paused, closed his mouth, looked down into his coffee, making a little sighing hmm noise in the back of his throat. He looked up, tried again. Failed.

"What?" Riddick asked finally. He tried to feel annoyed. He tried to feel something. His voice and emotions were blank. Numb and desensitized. He couldn't even work up interest let alone annoyance.

"There has been a family at the shelter for the past three months. In transit to a colony in the next system the ship they were traveling on was attacked by pirates. All the cargo, including passenger possessions, were stolen. Unfortunately, the family had spent all of their remaining money on their ship fare and a place to stay once they got to the colony. When they did not show up, they lost their home and now have no money and no belongings."

"What's this got to do with me?"

"Nothing. Not really. Except, someone murdered them all two nights ago. There were two parents, a ten year old son and a fourteen year old daughter. The mother and daughter were strangled, but the father was tortured. Even raped. We can't find the boy's body."

"No."

"No? Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean 'no.' No, I won't go lookin' for a kid. I won't. I know that's what you're workin' up to, Holy Man."

"For some strange reason, Riddick, children trust you. If this boy is alive, he might come out to you, if only you will look for him."

"No."

"You won't even consider it?"

"No."

"Because you are frightened that you will become attached as you did to Jack or because there really is nothing left within you anymore? Jack wouldn't believe that. Jack wouldn't recognize the man you have become. Jack would not even like you."

Riddick knew Imam was trying to get a rise out of him. Trying to make him feel something. He knew he should get up, deck the holy man, make him regret is unfair words. His true words. Instead he reached for his coffee, the mug now cool to the touch, and stared at his reflection in the murky liquid. "Jack is dead," he said quietly. "And so am I."

"I do not believe that."

"Don't matter, Imam."

"You are scared, and I see you losing the battle. I see it in the way you go to the bathroom and vomit, the way you do not eat, or interact with the world outside of your apartment or mine. Riddick, I am afraid you are going crazy."

**__**

One Day Later:

Riddick stood in a dark alleyway. People rarely talked about what alleyways in large cities were really like. They often described the way there were dumpsters, bags of trash, and litter. They talked about rusty pop cans and rats. Mice nibbling away at cardboard. Stray cats and dogs. They didn't talk about the reeking stench of garbage. The strong scent of urine and human feces. Carcasses of the same rodents and strays they described digging for scraps. Syringes and tourniquets from drug usage. Used, slimy condoms from back alley rendezvous and bloody handprints from rapes and murders.

All of that was in the alley Riddick stood in, and then some. Yellow police tape marked off where the murder had occurred. The details of the murder and the motives were hazy and theoretical to say the best, but for Riddick's purpose they were unimportant. He merely needed the boy. The police didn't really care what had happened to a drifter family with no where to go and from no where important.

Imam had given him a piece of the boys shirt, smeared with blood, for a reference. His senses were bombarded with the shriveling scents permeating the air, but Riddick could still pick up a faint trace of the kid. The alleyway smelled of fear and death. Locked anticipation. Riddick could feel anxiety building up in his stomach, whether from a remnant of the emotion still filling the air or from his own fear of finding the boy.

Mutilated or alive, Riddick was regretting his decision to help. Mutilated, Riddick would be sacrificed to the sight of yet another dead child. Another murdered innocent. Allison Lambert's angelic face flashed before his eyes. Allison's mouth caked and bleeding, one tooth knocked out by a vicious hand. Tortured, tortured, tortured. All of them. Everyone. She'd been eleven years old. 

Alive, he'd have to deal with another lost child, staring at him with wide, hopeful eyes. Eyes that trusted actions not reputations.

The boy he was searching for, Hyun-Shik Chang, was just a year younger than Allison had been. Riddick wondered if the boy had a nickname. Imam said the boy's name meant clever in Korean. It didn't matter. While the name might be good for a grown man it was a mouthful for a boy and it didn't roll off Riddick's tongue quite right. His Korean was a language in which he was sadly lacking.

With a sigh born from disappointment in himself for giving in to Imam's pleas for help, Riddick closed his eyes and threw himself into the scene that lay cold and empty around him. He could feel the hate in that place. He had enough physical details of the positions the bodies had been found in to know what had happened.

Four assailants, armed with bats and piano wire. The small family of four, scrounging for something maybe useful in the trash. People believed that all oriental people knew Kung Fu. Soo Chang did not. He didn't even know Korea's traditional martial art, Hwarang, or the more modern and less traditional form, Tae Kwon Do.

His wife and daughter were beaten with the bats, finished off with piano wire around the throat. The girl's head had been nearly severed. Riddick pushed the remembered images from the photographs to the back of his mind.

Strangely, the women hadn't been raped, but Soo had been. Riddick wasn't exactly surprised, as the police obviously had been. He'd spent a good portion of his life in the slam. Man-to-man anal rape, and even oral, had been quite common place. It didn't make the rape, of a man or a woman, any less revolting to him.

All that was left of the boy, however, was a piece of his shirt. Perhaps torn off by an assailant, perhaps caught on something sharp as he fled the scene of his family's murder.

Preternatural senses led Riddick to the boy. He was hiding in a drain, sitting in freezing water, huddled in a ball. Riddick laid on his stomach in the street and reached down into the drain.

"Hyun-Shik?" he called quietly, trying to keep his voice from rumbling too much. He didn't want to alarm the kid. The kid's skin was white with cold. Riddick hoped he didn't have hypothermia, wondered how long he'd been sitting down there without food or water. "Hyun-Shik," Riddick called again when the boy didn't react.

When the kid still didn't move Riddick swore under his breath and slid his upper body as far into the drain as he could. He wouldn't have been able to fit at all if he hadn't lost so much weight over the past year. With a grunt and sheer strength, Riddick snagged the kid's shirt at the shoulder and started to pull. The shirt tore and Riddick almost lost him, but he worked his fingers farther into the thin, dirty material and pulled him up to the drain. Using both hands, Riddick maneuvered the kid into a better position and pulled him out of the sewer.

He wasn't breathing and Riddick swore under his breath again. He checked Hyun-Shik's pulse with two fingers under his jaw, felt the flutter of a faint heartbeat. Alive. "C'mon, kid," Riddick encouraged, tilting Hyun-Shik's head back and pinching his nose shut. He took a deep breath and blew into the kid's mouth, felt the tiny chest rise and fall with forced air. He did it a few times, checked for breath, then pumped the kids chest, hoping to push up the water that must be in his lungs.

Riddick repeated CPR on the kid a few more times before the boy finally responded, turning his head and coughing up water, sucking in lungfuls of precious air. He coughed, clenching his eyes shut and moaned quietly.

When he opened his eyes and saw Riddick he tried to desperately scrabble away backwards, found his limps too weak and useless, sat with his back against the curb, whimpered in fear.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, Hyun-Shik," Riddick assured the child, holding out one massive palm. "If I'd wanted to do that you'd be a goner already. You were more than half drowned a minute ago."

Slanted, black eyes regarded Riddick with fear and suspicion. "How do you know my name?" he asked.

"Imam, at the shelter. You remember him?"

Hyun-Shik nodded. "Where are my parents? Where's Yon?" Yon was Hyun-Shik's older sister.

Riddick could see in the boy's eyes that he already knew the answer to those questions. That he had seen the tragedy happen. 

"Hyun-Shik-"

"Seven."

"What?"

"My family, they call me Seven."

"Okay. Seven, they're gone. You know that."

The boy stared at him in defiance for a moment, his teeth clenched and his lips pursed, as if he would deny the facts.

"Where do I go now?" he finally asked in a small voice, his chin dropping to his chest. His dark eyes gazed up at Riddick through thick black lashes.

Riddick surprised himself more with his answer than he could ever surprise the kid. "You go with me."

**__**

FINIS


End file.
